Arellano: 'Superman' used to chase Nazis. Now it's the tamale lady

Yahoo

12 hours ago

There are people who keep reliving their glory days, and then there's Dean Cain.
The film and TV actor is best known for his work in the 1990s series 'Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.'
He was no Christopher Reeve or Henry Cavill.
But enough people remember Cain in blue tights and a red cape that he's a regular on the fan convention circuit.
It's his calling card, so when the Trump administration put out the call to recruit more ICE agents, guess who answered the call?
Big hint: Up, up and a güey!
On Aug. 6, the up until then not exactly buzzworthy Cain revealed on Instagram that he joined la migra — and everyone else should too!
Read more: Commentary: TV Superman Dean Cain is recruiting immigration agents and, thanks to DHS, so is 'South Park'
The 59-year old actor made his announcement as an orchestral version of John Williams' stirring "Superman" theme played lightly below his speech.
Superman used to go after Nazis, Klansmen and intergalactic monsters; now, Superman — er, Cain — wants to go after Tamale Lady. His archenemy used to be Lex Luthor; now real-life Bizarro Superman wants to go to work for the Trump administration's equally bald-pated version of Lex Luthor: Stephen Miller.
'You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,' Cain said, flashing his bright white smile and brown biceps. Behind him was an American flag in a triangular case and a small statue depicting Cain in his days as a Princeton Tigers football player. 'If you want to save America, ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America's streets.'
Later that day, Cain appeared on Fox News to claim he was going to 'be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP,' a role Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin clarified to the New York Times would be only honorary. His exaggeration didn't stop the agency's social media account to take a break from its usual stream of white supremacist dog whistles to gush over Cain's announcement.
'Superman is encouraging Americans to become real-life superheroes,' it posted, 'by answering their country's call to join the brave men and women of ICE to help protect our communities to arrest the worst of the worst.'
American heroes used to storm Omaha Beach. Now the Trump administration wants its version of them to storm the garden section of Home Depot.
Its appeal to Superman is part of a campaign to cast la migra as good guys while casting all undocumented people as shadowy villains who deserve deportation — the faster and nastier the better. But as with almost anything involving American history, Team Trump has already perverted Superman's mythos. In early June, they put Trump, who couldn't leap over a bingo card in a single bound let alone a tall building, on the White House's social media accounts in a Superman costume. This was accompanied with the slogan: 'Truth. Justice. The American Way.' That was the day before Warner Bros. released its latest Man of Steel film.
Even noncomic book fans know that the hero born Kal-El on Krypton was always a goody-goody who stood up to bullies and protected the downtrodden. He came from a foreign land — a doomed planet, no less — as a baby. His alter ego, Clark Kent, is humble and kind, traits that carry over when he turns into Superman.
The character's caretakers always leaned on that fictional background to comment on real-world events. In a 1950 poster, as McCarthyism was ramping up, DC Comics issued a poster in which Superman tells a group of kids that anyone who makes fun of people for their 'religion, race or national origin ... is un-American.'
A decade later, Superman starred in a comic book public service announcement in which he chided a teen who said 'Those refugee kids can't talk English or play ball or anything' by taking him to a shabby camp to show the boy the hardships refugees had to endure.
The Trumpworld version of Superman would fly that boy to "Alligator Alcatraz" to show him how cool it is to imprison immigrants in a swamp infested with crocodilians.
It might surprise you to know that in even more recent times, in a 2017 comic book, Superman saves a group of undocumented immigrants from a man in an American flag do-rag who opened fire on them. When the attempted murderer claimed his intended targets stole his job, Superman snarled "The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul ... is you."
Superman used to tell Americans that immigrants deserved our empathy; Super Dean wants to round them up and ship them out.
Read more: Up, up and … eh? A rebooted 'Superman' gives the Man of Steel a mind of marshmallow
Rapists? Murderers? Terrorists? That's who Superman né Cain says ICE is pursuing — the oft repeated "worst of the worst" — but Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that 71% of people currently held in ICE detention have no criminal records as of July 27.
I don't think the real Superman — by whom I mean the fictional one whom Cain seems to think he's the official spokesperson for just because he played him in a middling dramedy 30-some years ago — would waste his strength and X-ray vision to nab people like that.
Dean "Discount Superman" Cain should grab some popcorn and launch on a Superman movie marathon to refresh himself on what the Man of Steel actually stood for. He can begin with the latest.
Its plot hinges on Lex Luthor trying to convince the U.S. government that Superman is an 'alien' who came to the U.S. to destroy it.
'He's not a man — he's an It. A thing,' the bad guy sneers at one point, later on claiming Superman's choirboy persona is 'lulling us into complacency so he can dominate [the U.S.] without resistance.'
Luthor's scheme, which involves manipulating social media and television networks to turn public opinion against his rival, eventually works. Superman turns himself in and is whisked away to a cell far away from the U.S. along with other political prisoners. Luthor boasts that '[constitutional] rights don't apply to extraterrestrial organisms.'
Tweak that line a little and it could have come from the mouth of Stephen Miller.
Director James Gunn told a British newspaper that his film's message is 'about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.'
He also called Superman an "immigrant," which set Cain off. He called Gunn "woke" on TMZ and urged Gunn to create original characters and keep Superman away from politics.
Well, Super Dean can do his thing for ICE and Trump. He can flash his white teeth for promotional Trump administration videos as he does who knows what for the deportation machine.
Just leave Superman out of it.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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